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“Coffee, coffee,” she muttered, stumbling toward the kitchen. It was then she saw the big, galvanized washtub in the middle of the floor. As a rule she did her laundry on the back stoop, where she could stand on the ground without having to bend over. But if someone had caught her washing men’s clothing, she would have had a lot of explaining to do.
Coffee would just have to wait. Before she’d even lifted the garments from the final rinse it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to hang them outside. Back in Charlotte she had used the attic in rainy weather, but here there was no attic. She would have to dry everything in the kitchen, either that or build up a fire in the fireplace.
While she was trying to decide where to string a line, she thought of the letter. Should she give it to him when he woke up?
If he woke up?
Or should she keep it in case he didn’t recover and someone had to be notified. But in that case, how could she get word out? She could hardly ask any of the Millers to mail a letter or send a wire for her. They had refused every time she’d tried to get in contact with any of her friends back in Charlotte.
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that it had to have been Alaska and his whiskey-making friends who had done this awful thing. When they had what Devin used to call a skin full, they liked nothing better than to engage in a fistfight with everyone piling on, making enough noise to be heard halfway to the moon. Devin had called it good-natured brawling, but there was nothing good-natured about beating a man half to death.
Now what? she wondered, feeling even more helpless than usual. The natural thing would have been to hurry down the hill and ask for help. Under the circumstances, that was out of the question.
She brought in her clothesline and strung it across the kitchen area, letting the excess line dangle from the nail. She knew better than to shorten a good clothesline, having learned how hard it was to get a replacement. She had asked over and over for more. Might as well have asked for the moon. They must have thought she wanted to use it to lower herself down the backside of the mountain, a sheer drop of more than two hundred feet.
She turned the Levi’s inside out so that the doubled parts—the waist, the seams and pockets—would dry. If he survived, her stranger would need something to wear. If he didn’t, he would need burial clothes. Either way, she would have them ready for him, but he’d have to do without underwear. There was no way she could piece together his union suit, even if he gave it up. So far he’d refused to allow her to take the bottom half. For all she knew he might still be wearing it. At this rate, her whole bed would be mildewed. Crazy fool. “Go ahead, die of lung fever, see if I care,” she muttered, wringing out his one black sock.
But of course, she did care. It wasn’t in her not to care.
After baling out the tub, she turned it down on the back stoop and thought about the next problem. Food. Her rations were carefully allotted for a woman living alone. She could hardly ask for more without inviting questions.
She tiptoed into the bedroom to see if he was still breathing. He was. Slowly, evenly, and so far as she could tell, without any sounds that would indicate that a broken rib had punctured his lung. “I don’t know who the devil you are,” she murmured, “or what you’re doing on my mountain, but if you survive you’re going to have company when you leave.”
In the settlement called Dexter’s Cut, Hector paused outside Digger Hooten’s cabin, checked his fingernails, finger-combed his shoulder-length hair, and then called through the door. “Digger? You to home?”
The runty redheaded man appeared at the door, eyes narrowed against the bright morning sun. “’Mon in, Heck. Set a spell.” Digger was a flatlander who’d married a Miller and produced two children—a daughter, Varnelle, and a son, Alaska, the latter named for the dream he’d always had of heading north in search of gold.
When he’d heard about Dexter’s Cut, he’d figured he’d save time and money by filing a claim on Miller land. Couldn’t be done. So he’d filed a claim on one of the Miller women instead, which was less trouble in the long run. He’d never found more than a few grains of gold, hardly enough to be worth his time digging. But then, his luck might not have been any better in Alaska, and he was too old now to start over.
It was common knowledge that Heck had never had much use for Alaska, so Digger said, “I reckon you come to see Varnelle. She’s over to Miss Lucy’s. Gone to get something for my wife’s bellyache. Right useful girl, my Varnelle. Pretty, too, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”
Fortunately, Varnelle took after her mother. Digger was a homely man.
“Nope, I come to see you.” Heck sat on the room’s only chair while his host settled onto one of two wooden benches. “Nice weather,” he added. An educated man, Heck knew when to haul out his company manners.
“Tol’able,” the old man responded.
Heck had thought long and hard before approaching Digger, but the buck-nekked truth was, he loved his daughter. “Hear tell you been panning some,” he ventured. Most of the locals panned the creek on days when it was too hot to work the fields. That way they didn’t have to feel guilty for laying out while their women were firing up a hot stove to cook their dinner.
“Panned some last week. Didn’t do no good. Wore m’knees out, but that there gold’s done washed all the way down to the river and gone by now. Ever’body knows that.”
“Then how come you wasted time pannin’?” This was going to be tricky as a tote sack full of rattlers. Digger wasn’t mean like Alaska. What he was, was crafty. It took a right smart man to get around him, and third-grade education or not, Heck wasn’t sure he was up to the task.
For Varnelle, though, he was bound to try. “About your daughter,” he began when the old man cut him off.
“I seen the way you been lookin’ at her, boy. You ain’t foolin’ me, nosiree.”
“Well now, she’s a right pretty woman for a redhead.” He thought he’d add the qualifier so as not to appear too eager.
“Tell you what I’ll do, boy. You ain’t the onliest man that’s come a-sniffin’ at her heels, but you show up with Dev’s share of the mine and I’ll set you right up there at the top of the list. Can’t say fairer’n that.”
Heck pursed his lips, laced his fingers across his flat belly and looked thoughtful. “Well now, much as I’d like to oblige, I don’t reckon I can do that.” He’d expected some kind of a clinker. Old Digger was a greedy man, always had been. “On the other hand, don’t reckon any of the others can, either, so that makes us even.”
They passed the time of day for a few more minutes, and Heck made a point of mentioning what a blessing an unmarried daughter was to an old man and his woman. “’Course, lacking a husband to keep ’em sweet, a woman’ll turn real sour as she gets older. Some of ’em gets downright mean. I don’t reckon you’ll mind that none, though, seein’s she’s kin.” He paused to let the words sink in. “Have to support her, too, but at least she’ll be around to see you laid out all nice and proper when the time comes.”
He left a few minutes later, the question he’d come to ask still unanswered. Digger Hooten was not only crafty, he was smart as a whipsnake.
If there was any way in the world Heck could get his hands on Dev’s share, he would do it in a minute, yessir, that he would. Trouble was, those shares weren’t like pieces of paper a man could slip in and steal. What they were was twenty-five solid acres of the most promising land in the entire settlement, the very same hill where old Dexter had struck pay dirt sixty years ago. The land had been passed down to his grandson, who had died and left it to his widow. The only way a man could lay claim to it now would be to marry Elly Nora.
Heck didn’t want to do that on account of he loved Varnelle. Besides, if he married Elly Nora, the property would be his, but he’d have to kill her before he could marry Varnelle. And while he’d done his share of killing, he drew the line at killing a woman.
So he figured he’d just study on it some more. That old hill weren’t going nowhere, he told himself, and neither was Elly Nora.
Time passed. Hearing a slight sound, Jed opened one eye and there she was again. The light was different now. More time had passed. How much time? He didn’t have time to waste. George was counting on him.
His thoughts came in batches between painful breaths. He could see her face more clearly now. She was older than he’d first thought…if he’d thought at all. Mostly, he’d just felt and wished he could stop feeling. He studied her some more as she gathered up things from the washstand—a hairbrush that had seen its best days. An ivory comb and a towel. It occurred to him that she resembled a picture of a woman he’d seen in one of the big churches in Raleigh. Hair like a lumpy halo, face like a saint.
She came over to the bedside then, and he saw the shadows under her eyes. He wanted to offer to give her her bed back—it was obviously the only bed in the house—but he lacked the strength to speak. Lacked the strength to move if she took him up on the offer.
So he watched her through aching eyes and wondered who she was, what the devil she was doing here, and which was the best way out of here without running afoul of those gun-toting, hell-raising pig-swills that had jumped him down by the creek.
Her shadowy eyelids were fringed with thick, colorless lashes. With the angle of the light, it was impossible to tell what color her eyes were. Curiously enough, it mattered. He was right partial to blue-eyed women, always had been.
Hers weren’t blue. But then, they weren’t black, either.
He tried to turn over onto his side for a better view. Jesus, that hurt! Those bastards had kicked his ribs in, laughing all the while.
At his gasp, the woman leaned closer. “What hurts?”
“Everything,” he managed to whisper. He said it with a grin. At least he grinned on the inside—didn’t know if it made it all the way to the surface. Never let it be said that Jed Blackstone wasn’t a good sport, even when he was cashing in his chips.
Could those goons that had jumped him have been hired by Stanfield? Why else would they try to kill a stranger who’d done nothing more than stop for a drink of water?
He needed answers and he needed them right damn now.
That wasn’t all he needed, he suddenly realized. Moving restlessly, he tried to sit up.
A pair of gentle hands pressed him back down. “Shh, you just lie still and rest. Would you like a drink of water?”
“No, dammit, I need to p—”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you. Don’t even try to get up yet, I think you might’ve hurt your ribs.”
Tell me something I don’t know, he thought, angling his head to get a better look at the woman who had either rescued him or dragged him here to finish him off. At this point, he wasn’t certain of anything.
She was tall for a woman—too thin. The kind of hair that looked as if it had never seen a brush. Not exactly pretty, but not what you’d call plain, either.
“Lady, I need to get up and you need to get the hell out,” he said clearly, his voice urgent. Even talking hurt. He must’ve bit his tongue when they’d caught him on the side of the head with that spade.
“Oh,” the yellow-haired woman said, her eyes widening. “I’ll bring the chamber pot. Can you manage by yourself?”
“What if I can’t?” He couldn’t move his lips, but he could make himself understood.
She blinked, and then damned if she didn’t laugh.
Had he said something funny? If so, it had been purely unintentional, because funny was the last thing he felt.
“I don’t think you can make it out to the privy in your condition.”
Come to think of it, neither did he, but his bladder was fit to bust. He needed a pot and some privacy.
She gave him both.
“Here. If you need any help, I’ll be right outside.” Blushing, she drew a white porcelain chamber pot from under the bed and set it on the table beside him. At the door she paused. “If privacy is what you need I have more than enough to spare,” she said with a funny quirk in her voice. “Besides, I need—I need to feed the animals.”
Letting him know she wouldn’t be lurking outside the door, in other words.
She lingered a moment, adding, “Not that I have any animals, just my two laying hens. Hector—he’s one of the Millers—he gave me a puppy for company once, but it followed him right back down the hill.”
He squinted at her through his partially open eye, wondering if she was totally witless. Wild color flushed her cheeks and she turned and fled. A moment later he heard the outside door slam.
He managed to relieve himself, feeling as if his head was floating a few feet above his shoulders. His belly felt funny, too, not sick like he’d been drinking bad water, but sore, like he’d been worked over by a gorilla.
Five gorillas was more like it. “Jesus,” he gasped, and then flopped back onto the bed and closed his eyes. The slightest movement brought on another pitchfork attack. He was dead certain sure by now that he’d cracked a few ribs. The question was, how many and how cracked? Cracked to the point where the slightest wrong movement could kill him?
Or cracked just enough to make lying perfectly still for the foreseeable future his only option?
At least his head was clearer now. For a while there it had been touch-and-go. He’d actually been afraid they had punched his brains out, but he remembered everything now. Remembered signing the deed and arranging to send most of the money home. Remembered giving McGee a piece of cheese and a soda cracker when they’d stopped by that creek…
What the devil had happened to McGee? He and that miserable old croppy had been together too long to part company now. They had a history together, ever since Jed had saved him from the glue factory. Jed had agreed to feed the biting, kicking, crop-eared old sunfisher and in return, McGee agreed not to bite him, kick him or throw him hard enough to break his neck. So far, for the most part, both had kept their word.
He hoped to hell one of those bastards tried to catch McGee. The last time he’d seen them, they’d been lurching off down the road, one wearing his hat, another one carrying his boots, laughing and cussing a blue streak as they tried to keep from falling on their ugly faces.
If they met again he’d be ready for them, if he had to bind himself up like one of those dead Egyptian kings he’d read about. Given better odds—say three to one instead of five to one—he liked his chances just fine. He wouldn’t go looking for a fight, though. Not this time. He had places to go and things to do, and he’d already wasted two days. Or was it three now?
A tap on the door was followed by a soft voice inquiring if he needed assistance. “I’m all right,” he said, lying through his teeth. If he still had any teeth. He could feel with his tongue, but that hurt, too. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Sleepy,” he added, hoping she would go away. From the way his head felt, he must’ve made intimate contact with every rock this side of the Eastern Divide.
Sleep. He’d give himself a day. Two, at most, and then he would find his horse and get the hell out of here, with or without his clothes. The lady could go on talking to her chickens from now till they started talking back, it was no skin off his teeth.
If he still had any teeth.
Chapter Five
An hour later Eleanor tapped on the door again. She’d held off as long as she dared, knowing he needed his rest. But what if he weren’t resting? What if he had passed out? Or worse…
When no answer was forthcoming, she opened the door and peered inside. He was sound asleep, breathing slowly through his swollen lips, but breathing. Evidently exhausted, he had slept through the night, the following morning and most of the afternoon while she’d waited anxiously to see if he was going to live or die. If only there was some way to tell if a body was bleeding internally.
There probably was, only she was no physician—just a third-grade teacher in a small school on the outskirts of a big city.
He was cleaner. At least his hands and face were cleaner. Now she intended to tackle the rest of him. His scalp, for instance. His hair was caked with dried blood, but when she’d tried to examine an obvious lump to see the extent of the damage, he’d started cursing. And then tried to apologize, which had made her feel even worse.
“I know you hurt,” she’d told him earlier when she’d come to collect his ruined underwear to wash it and see if any of it could be used again. “I’ll try to be as easy as possible, but I need to look at this place on your head.”
Scalp wounds bled copiously, she had read that somewhere, but to determine if his wound was more than scalp deep she was going to have to cut away his hair. That would mean another battle. She hadn’t forgotten the last time she’d come at him with a pair of scissors.
“If the rest of you is as filthy as the parts I’ve already bathed,” she told the sleeping man, “your cuts and scratches are probably already infected. With or without your cooperation, sir, I’m going to have to clean you up and put something on your injuries before it’s too late.”
There, let him think about that.
She’d brought in a basin of warm water, two towels and a chunk of soap. Carefully, she set the basin on the bedside table. She would have to work quickly so as not to tire him further. “You need to get well and get out of here,” she muttered under her breath. “Because if it was the Millers who did this to you, and if they follow you here, I’m not sure I can protect you. I’ll try, of course, but they won’t listen to me, they never do. Hold still now, I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
Lowering the afghan so that it covered him from his waist to below his knees, she washed his chest and just beneath. He wasn’t particularly hairy, but a thin streak of silky black hair circled his flat nipples and dissected his torso, disappearing under the flowered purple cover.
“They took Devin’s rifle, did I tell you that? If it were just one man, I might fight him off with a skillet, but if they think you’re here, they’ll come trooping up my hill like a—like I don’t know what. If they’re drinking, things could get out of hand. I’m going to have to turn you over now. I’ll be as easy as I can.”
He gasped during the process, but he didn’t resist. She had sense enough to apply pressure to his shoulder and his hip, in case his ribs were injured. She was pretty certain they were, as there were two fairly deep cuts on his side. A doctor would probably stitch him up, but that was far beyond her skills. If she even dared try she might faint. The best she could do was wash him, smear on some of Miss Lucy’s turpentine and bear-grease salve and bind him up.
But first she needed to finish bathing him while the water was still warm. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to catch a chill.
She managed to slide one arm under his body to shift him so that she could see his full back, but when she tried to turn him toward her he cried out.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, frozen in a backbreaking position. What now? Finish turning him over or forget about his back? If he had any cuts there they might fester unless she could get to them and treat them. She had already torn a sheet into strips, intending to bind his ribs, but unless he allowed her to move him again, she couldn’t even do that much.
“I’m sorry, this has to be done,” she said firmly. Steeling herself to ignore his groans, she managed to roll him over onto his stomach. He muttered curses; she mumbled apologies. “Actually, you’re not even bleeding here, only bruised. But…” In the process of rolling him over, the afghan had pulled away from his body. Now her gaze swept over his narrow buttocks.
The scar was an old one. It was none of her business, she told herself as she applied a warm, soapy cloth to his shoulders. My God, what on earth…?
She took one more look at the peculiar scar, but except for the parts that needed attention, she avoided looking at his naked body again. One way or another, she vowed silently as she gently cleansed what looked like a knife wound on his thigh, she vowed that whoever had done this cowardly thing would pay for their sins if she had to blow up Devin’s hill and every last tunnel that riddled it.
“In fact, it might be just the diversion we need to make our escape,” she said thoughtfully.
Facing the wall to hide his embarrassment, Jed frowned. The woman rattled on like a dried gourd in a high wind, but…
Our escape? He knew damned well where he was going, and the last thing he needed was a traveling companion.
“The trouble is,” she confided earnestly as she poured liquid fire in his open wounds, “I don’t know a blessed thing about dynamite, do you?”
“Dynamite?” He managed to open one eye just as she stepped away from the bed. That was a bit extreme, even for him. All he wanted was to find McGee and get the hell out of here. He’d leave Satan to mete out any punishment due.
He managed to roll onto his back again unassisted, pulling the tapestry throw over his privates. She looked at him worriedly and asked if he was hurting.
“No,” he lied. Nowhere except for his ribs, his head, his back and his left ankle. Except for roughly two-thirds of his body, it didn’t hurt a bit.
“There, you see? You’re getting better already.” The smile on her face made her look almost pretty. Not as pretty as Vera, but pretty in a different way.
“Now, I’ve decided to bind up your ribs in case any of them are broken,” she announced. “I have the strips right here, but if you’re tired, we can wait a little while until you’ve had time to rest up from your bath.”
“Mm.” Meaning, just go away and leave me for the next few years, I’ve had about all I can take for one day.
